Next stop, Greenwich Village

Just a few days ago, I saw an item on Twitter, from Time.com (I believe), in its 'reading for lunchtime' feature, Wes Anderson's favorite New York films. This is one of those films.

It has a 6.9 rating in IMDb.com: An aspiring Jewish actor moves out of his parents' Brooklyn apartment to seek his fortune in the bohemian life of Greenwich Village in 1953.

Critics give it 80% in Rotten Tomatoes, the audience 66% (there is not accounting for taste, is there?).

Larry Lipinski is a Brooklyn Jew, 22 years old, and is moving out of his parents's home, to grow up, to be with his liberated girlfriend, to pursue acting. (In a voiceover, which I watched a bit of, Paul Mazursky says that Larry is partly him.) It is 1953. The Rosenbergs are on the brink of being executed. Yet Larry and his friends, while politically aware, are more interested in other matters: sex, the meaning of life, whether to go to Mexico or not, and suicide.

Chris Walken plays Robert, a handosme ladies man whose libido is only matched in size by his ego. Jeff Goldblum plays a small but discernible role as a pushy, loud actor. Bill Murray has a small speakign part in a bar. Vincent Schiavelli is a party guest who drinks and laughs.

Shelley Winters overplays the Jewish mother who can't let go of her boy, can't stop meddling, and can't (or won't) see how she is hurting the very ones she loves. Yet, in her overplaying, Winters does super work. Antonio Fargas does nice work as an openly gay black man (remember, the 1976 movie was portraying 1953), and Lou Jacobi shines as the juice bar shopowner where Larry gets a job while he waits for his big break.

Larry and his friends go to a coffeehouse, to hang out and philosophize. I recognized it immediately, or so I thought, though the street outside seemed not to fit. But a shot confirmed that it was Cafe Reggio.

Ebert gave it 3 stars. I liked it, too.

‘Skins,’ Sex and Foreign Affairs

On Monday’s episode of  MTV could show minors in the kind of flagrante delicto that is usually reserved for mature audiences. Yet most adult Americans still can’t watch Al Jazeera English on television — even now, when the world is transfixed by images of Egypt in revolt. It seems like a perverse application of free speech. But sex is sexier than foreign affairs and it certainly sells better. Freedom of expression is guaranteed to all Americans, but mostly it follows the money.

Brings to mind that line by H.L. Mencken: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." [That seems moreaccurate than: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”]

The English-language version is more cosmopolitan, offering a non-Western view of world events that is instructive, if not always persuasive. Al Jazeera English is available in more than 100 countries, including Canada, but it is almost totally invisible in the United States — except on cable providers in Burlington, Vt.; Toledo, Ohio; and Washington.

What ever happpened to the assertion that most people get their news through the Internet?

To be fair, Al Jazeera English may be providing the most up-close and personal coverage round-the-clock, but it isn’t necessarily the best. And “Skins” isn’t the worst series for young people on cable, not by far. That would be “Jersey Shore.”

The little I see of that latter show makes me wonder just why it is so poular. To wit: “Jersey Shore” is popular mostly because it is a reality show that works like a cartoon. The stars are self-parodying characters who misbehave outlandishly — without comeuppance or scary consequences. Like Daffy Duck, who can dodge hunters’ bullets and swallow nitroglycerin, characters like Snooki can curse, get drunk, have promiscuous sex and buy a stripper pole, and never get seriously hurt.

La Mission

April 7, 2010, 6:00 PM ET: New Benjamin Bratt Film ‘La Mission’ Highlights Car Culture.

“La Mission,” a film starring Benjamin Bratt and directed by his brother, Peter, is set in San Francisco’s Mission District. It focuses on a father named Che Rivera, played by Bratt, who struggles with the revelation that his son is gay. 

Check out this story and other articles about cars on our sister blog Driver’s Seat.

Feast of Love

I found this film as a result of searching on the name of Charles Baxter. His name appeared on the back of Schlepping through the Alps. This film is based on one of Baxter's books. The mp3 version of that book is described thus: From "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune), here is a superb new novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people. In vignettes both comic and sexy, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates: The owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection; a young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love; a professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable working of the human heart. Their voices resonate with each other and come together in a tapestry that depicts the most irresistible arena of life.

 The movie is adapted to feature Morgan Freeman, the philosophy professor, and sex. Freeman is, of course, wonderful. It is not a demanding role, and he hits a double with ease. Maybe a triple. No, a double. The rest of the film is a bunch of singles. The film works, yes, but the sex is gratuitous and overdone.

Transamerica

Rather weird film about a transexual woman, played by Felicity Huffman. Weird in a curious, good way.

Middle-aged women -- Sexual behavior

Sex and the seasoned woman : pursuing the passionate life. (2006). Gail Sheehy. New York: Random House.








Booklist Reviews

After taking a break to analyze the effects of 9/11 on a community in New Jersey in Middletown, America (2003), best-selling journalist Sheehy returns to her Passages (1976) gambit. Here she examines the ways women--and some men--ages 45 and over are approaching sex, love, romance, and marriage. Labeling this stage in life a "second adulthood," Sheehy notes that it is marked by an intense desire to exert greater mastery over one's health, emotions, and vocation. Using her own research and drawing on survey responses, Sheehy examines how older women are coping and classifies her respondents as healthy "passionates" and "seekers," frustrated married women, those resigned to the status quo, and those suffering from lowered libidos. The heart of the book consists of lengthy interviews with seasoned women who talk candidly about younger lovers, online dating, sex-toy parties, bisexuality, divorce, long-term marriages that have been reinvented, and finding a new love late in life. Sheehy sometimes seems stuck in the gee-whiz school of journalism (Women over 50 are interested in sex! Divorce is painful!). And her compressed style may give some readers whiplash ("In the last year Sue's house was repossessed and she was diagnosed as bipolar"). Still, she presents a hot cultural topic in an accessible, highly readable book that will have great appeal for her core audience. ((Reviewed November 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews
New Passages for women over 50, who aren't ready to give up on sex. With a four-city tour. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal Reviews

Sheehy's stages of sexual and romantic maturity in the tradition of her earlier well-known works (e.g., Passages , The Silent Passage, Understanding Men's Passages ) probably occur far more flexibly than she describes, and her approach based on web questionnaires, interviews, and discussion groups claims indicative rather than statistical validity. Nonetheless, her sympathetic descriptions and recommendations culled from mature women about navigating the challenges of aging toward becoming a “seasoned siren” give this book real value. Her coverage of vaginal atrophy stands out--few books seem to address this common cause of pain associated with sex for older women. Many of her stories focus on the rich, megarich, and even the rich and famous. Yet Sheehy made an effort to include middle-American, minimum-wage, and Bible-belt women, whose solutions to aging and loneliness are sometimes more creative than those of the well-heeled cognoscenti and illuminati of the East and West coasts. For all collections.
[Page 94]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Sheehy, a self-described seasoned woman, set off in search of others like herself. Her premise? There's "a new universe of lusty, liberated women, some married and some not, who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age." Aside from the question whether the 200-odd women she contacts constitute a representative universe, her claim is hardly revelatory. Older women (especially Europeans) have known from time immemorial that age has nothing to do with desire and an urge to live passionately. What makes a difference these days is the opportunities afforded by online dating sites. Short on research, Sheehy, best known for Passages, makes do by stringing together colorful stories of the women she interviews, drawing inflated conclusions from their lives and claiming it all as part of yet another passage (will it ever end?) to Second Adulthood, with phases like "the Romantic Passage" and "Soul Seeking." The book's most chilling bit of information: you really do lose it if you don't use it. But take heart, ladies; Sheehy provides the name of a doctor who employs a nonsurgical method of rejuvenating the vagina, making it just as pink and open as it was when you were... that's right, young. (On sale Jan. 10)
[Page 40]. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.